The polarization trap.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION

In a political and cultural environment as polarized as ours, civility goes out the window. Blame for this goes far and wide. Pres. Barack Obama and Pres. Donald Trump have only contempt for those who challenge them, and are not reluctant to let that show--and it is hard to find any semblance of statesmanship in the likes of the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.). Celebrities, once careful about dabbling in partisan politics, seem to use every public appearance to announce their views. The former king of late night television, Johnny Carson, kept his politics to himself. Now we have hosts ready to take on the Republicans with every monologue. They seem to think the more vitriolic, the funnier. Not everyone is laughing.

The voices of the middle, center-left, and center-right are muffled. At one time, radio and television included the calm voices of such commentators as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Alistair Cooke, and Erwin D. Canham--names few can recognize today. College campuses, even during the so-called McCarthy era, had faculty that represented a wide range of political and social thought. No speakers were booed and shouted off the stage because they deviated from some enforced orthodoxy.

Ideologues in both parties make any bipartisan initiative unlikely to even get off the ground. The March defeat of the Republican health care bill in the House is a painful example. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) can give vivid testimony to that. With Democrats refusing to lift a finger to give the Republicans even a semblance of legislative accomplishment, Speaker Ryan needed overwhelming support from his own Republican caucus to get health care legislation through. It failed. At some time in the future, should the Democrats find themselves in the same position as Ryan and the Republicans, my guess is that the Republicans will return the favor. We have political deadlock while serious problems fester--out-of-control debt and deficits, incoherent immigration policy, an incomprehensible tax code, and health care a bureaucratic jumble.

In the heat of this relentless battle, it becomes difficult to develop coherent policy alternatives or conduct an intelligent discussion about them. This is a fight neither side wins and the country loses. The Democratic Party, with a weakened moderate wing, now is in the hands of the left and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren types. Few congressional Democrats are willing to deviate from the...